Namaste

“There is in each of us so much goodness that if we could see its glow, it would light the world.” Sam Friend

Namaste, often said in many yoga classes, is a gesture of respect. Yoga teachers bow and say it to the students. Students bow and say it to the teacher. In India, rather than being spoken, it’s simply a physical gesture with the palms together at the heart (heart/anahata chakra) or forehead (3rd eye/ajna chakra). Here, at least in the United States, the physical gesture is combined with the spoken word.

Namaste is a Sanskrit term. Broken down “Nama” means bow, “as” means I, and “te” means you. So taken together, Namaste literally means “I bow to you.” It has many translations such as “The divine in me, honors the divine in you.”, or “The light within me, bows to the light within you.”

So when I stumbled upon this quote “There is in each of us so much goodness that if we could see its glow, it would light the world.” I immediately thought this could be used as another translation for Namaste. Why not?